Reading Music

I'm very picky about having all files in my MP3 collections cleanly named. People are usually too lazy to name their MP3s properly, so renaming a collection with hundreds or thousands of songs can take ages or more.

Today I wrote a small tool that cleans up most of the bullshit one usually find in names of downloaded files, takes care of proper casing, spaces, brackets, etc.

It works really well for me. I just ran it over a my collection and it's a true beauty now, without any manual editing. Maybe someone of you can put in in use too.

Use on your own risk, unsupported software, blabla, etc.

The MP3 Filename Beautifier requires Perl (Perl for Windows is here).

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

does it only work for the File Names or for the ID3 Tags too?

I use MP3 Tag Studio from Magnus Branding
It's supports Mass Tagging and loads of other features, i think it a very good tool

Cya Magic

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

does it only work for the File Names or for the ID3 Tags too?

I've found that filenames are usually are more reliable source for artist name and song title than ID3 tags. I'm considering having the beautifier read out ID3 tags in case no artist name can be extracted from the filename.

As things are I consider ID3 tags pretty superfluous. Hardly anyone bothers to fill them with data. The crucial stuff (artist, title, genre) can be indicated much more easily by having clean filenames in a thought out directory structure.

Some possible insight into that in an explanation why meta data doesn't work.

I use MP3 Tag Studio from Magnus Branding
It's supports Mass Tagging and loads of other features, i think it a very good tool

I've tried a number of MP3 taggers. They're not bad, but I was never really satisfied (I'm very picky you see :). My main concern was that these applications update the timestamps on my songs and I like the possibilities to have my tracks listed in the order I created or downloaded them.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

My main concern was that these applications update the timestamps on my songs and I like the possibilities to have my tracks listed in the order I created or downloaded them.

... and thats possibly out of the same reason that _I_ like 'em sorted by date and not by name :)

so, MY reason is: if the track number IS NOT given in the filename, normally you can only sort it in the correct order (as it if you use the file creation date - and if this gets timestamped, then it's a BIT bad ... aka "mp3 tagger > /dev/null"

cu, w0lf.

Metal has no laws. Metal is the law.

This post was edited by oxygenius on May 05, 2003.

As things are I consider ID3 tags pretty superfluous. Hardly anyone bothers to fill them with data. The crucial stuff (artist, title, genre) can be indicated much more easily by having clean filenames in a thought out directory structure.

I use an MP3 CD Player and it reads MP3 Tags, so they are important to me.
I usually go trough my new MP3's, look if their filenames are good and then i use MP3 Tag Studio to delete all Tags (ID3 v2 and v1) and the i recreate them, using the Filename to MP3 tag tool

Mass Tagging is very helpful for me

Cya Magic

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

I usually go trough my new MP3's, look if their filenames are good and then i use MP3 Tag Studio to delete all Tags (ID3 v2 and v1) and the i recreate them, using the Filename to MP3 tag tool

Hey, that's exactly as I am doing it :) I wrote the beautifier to clean up the filenames so I can harvest quality data from there.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

So what exactly does your program do, I mean give an example for a very bad filename and what it turns it into.

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

Okay. Something really bad would look like this:

Dance) CD1-[Dj tIEStO] - 05 - urban train (Marc Otool RMX) - TCTA.mp3

The beautifier turns it into:

Tiesto, DJ - Urban Train (Marc Otool Remix).mp3

By the way, the improved version is now online.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

do you know a good Perl Compiler (I'm totally new to perl, i don't know anything about it)
Or could you compile it to an executable file?

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

do you know a good Perl Compiler (I'm totally new to perl, i don't know anything about it)

Perl isn't compiled, it's interpreted. The best you could do is download the Perl interpreter. To execute a given perl script just type:

perl somescript.pl

Or could you compile it to an executable file?

It's not really possible to compile Perl into an executable. Or if it's done, it's a hack. You might try this EXE for Windows 32, but no guarantee it doesn't blow up your screen or something.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

the interpreter works good
i tested it with another script (The old good "Hello world"), haven't got any wrong-named MP3-files at the moment

so Perl is a Script-language?

You could make a Perl to Compilable language convertor, a suggestion if you have too much freetime ;)

what i would also like in an MP3 tool is to wipe empty space at the end because i have some song which are about 3 minutes long, but the MP3 files plays 6 minutes, just 3 minutes nothing at the end (ok you could call that modern art, but I am no fan of modern art ;) )

Cya Magic

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer